


lost the plot again

by QueenWithABeeThrone



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Gen, Magic Gone Wrong, Resurrection, Temporary Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-11
Updated: 2018-08-11
Packaged: 2019-06-25 19:53:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,530
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15647823
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QueenWithABeeThrone/pseuds/QueenWithABeeThrone
Summary: “Waking up in a shallow grave can change someone,” he says, and urges the horse forward.or: someone else wakes up in the grave Mollymauk Tealeaf was buried in.





	lost the plot again

**Author's Note:**

> title is from Bring Me The Horizon’s “And The Snakes Start To Sing”.
> 
> can you guess who the surprise character is before the end?

“You’re fucking weird,” says Keg, on the third day they’re traveling together.

He hadn’t expected to see her, is the thing. He hadn’t really expected to see anyone, although after having to claw his way out of a shallow grave he hadn’t expected much of anything other than _oh god what just happened oh god what the fuck just happened oh god what the fuck did I die am I going to die again oh god oh god where am I what am I what the fuck is going on—_

He’d had a note.

He still has it, but it doesn’t quite ring any bells. The name feels wrong to him, _Mollymauk Tealeaf_ sounds strange and foreign, heavy on his tongue. But it’s as good a name as any, so he lets Keg call him Molly, Mollymauk, whatever she likes. Right now, she’s maybe the first person he can talk to who’s just as bemused as he is over—everything.

He puts out the fire. “I’ll take your word for it,” he says, dryly, “considering I wouldn’t know what isn’t weird.” This is a lie. He knows this body is weird—he doesn’t quite fit in it, doesn’t quite fit in tattoo-laden lavender skin and a coat of many colors. He’d only really taken it up because, well, it’s a coat, it’s warm, and the trip down to Zadash is cold as hell. Or not as cold as hell, but it’s still _cold_.

How would he know how cold hell is?

Maybe that’s what Keg’s talking about, when she says he’s fucking weird: how he just knows things, somehow, little random factoids popping freshly-formed out of his skull, like he did out of the ground. Either that, or the fact that he emerged from the ground at all. He’s pretty sure that when you bury someone, they’re supposed to be dead first. Unless he did something horrible enough to warrant being buried alive.

The funny thing is, he wouldn’t put that past himself. He’s not sure about a lot of things, but he knows this: he could do something horrible enough that he would’ve been buried alive for it.

“So, last night,” says Keg, as they’re saddling up the horses. Two dead men are buried nearby, and their coin purses hang from his hip. “I knew you could do that. With your—” And she waves a hand to his swords. Last night they’d seemed to burn bright, casting an eerie light against the darkness, and muscle memory had taken over and guided him through the battle, the killing. “But I didn’t know about the other part.”

“Which other part?” he asks, because, well, it’s not like he knows a lot of it, either. He hadn’t realized his blood could _do_ that. The lack of knowledge itches, in the back of his skull. He needs to know more, needs to see what else he can do, because he doesn’t want to be caught so off his guard like that again.

“That thing you did with your tattoos,” she says, waving a hand near her neck. He touches his own neck, where he’d put something to soak up the blood. “I knew you could do the blind thing, but I didn’t know about dragging poison out of someone. So.” She coughs. “Thanks. For that.”

“You’re welcome, I suppose,” he says, pulling himself up. He doesn’t tell her: he’d been trying to see how it worked.

There’s another beat, as Keg hauls herself up onto the saddle.

Then she says, “It’s weird, honestly. You don’t fight like you used to.”

“How did I fight?” he asks, absently petting the horse.

“Like someone who learned to fight from watching other people fake-fight,” says Keg. “All—dance-y and shit, right? Like a show. And now you fight like you were actually trained in it, but you don’t _do_ it a lot. But when you do fight…” She shivers, somewhat. “I don’t remember you being that angry.”

She isn’t wrong. He’d reacted too slowly, last night, that was how the poisoned dagger sank into Keg’s flesh. He’d—snapped, a little, brought the sword down on the man again and again and again.

He can’t quite bring himself to regret it, though. His hand comes up to the coin purses—they’re heavy with silver and copper, he’d checked. It’ll get them through a couple of nights in a shitty inn on the road, he thinks.

“Waking up in a shallow grave can change someone,” he says, and urges the horse forward.

\--

He’s not completely bereft. He knows a few things about himself:

First, his name is apparently Mollymauk Tealeaf, Molly to his friends. He’s not sure why someone would name their child after a bird, why they would think misspelling his name would make it less obvious, but hey, here he is, apparently.

Second, he needs to go find someone calling themselves the Gentleman in Zadash. Maybe then he’ll be directed towards this group calling themselves the Mighty Nein, although frankly, he’s not completely certain he wants to go look for them. The names written there, Beau and Caleb and Nott, don’t set off any reminders, don’t trigger any memories that were buried in the haze of his head. He doesn’t feel anything for them.

But there’s an itch in the back of his mind that says he has to know, and he’s rapidly figuring out that he _hates_ leaving something unfinished, leaving a question unanswered. And that’s what he is, isn’t he? An unanswered question, with abilities he’s trying to understand.

He and Keg find a tavern in a small town, on the road to Zadash. There’s a war on, he hears, and neither of them are particularly excited for the idea of being dragged into it. He doesn’t even remember the Empire, and Keg seems to think it’s about as useful as nipples on a breastplate, at best. So: small towns and backroads it is.

They find a tavern. He finds them a table, orders them both some ale, and is taking a sip when someone slurs, “Hey. Hey, you, _devil-blood_.”

Third, he’s a tiefling. He has the tail, the horns, the skin, everything. What he doesn’t have is the—the _certainty_ of being one, he supposes. In an abstract sense he knows he’s a tiefling, he knows he has Infernal heritage, but right now the slur startles him out of his thoughts, and he turns to look.

“Fuckin’ demon, what’re you doin’ here,” the man slurs, looming up over him with beady little eyes and flushed cheeks. “Drinkin’ where good, decent folks drink!”

He stares up at the man. Then he makes a show of looking around, and taking a slow sip. He also meets Keg’s gaze across the table, and her hand rests on the shaft of her axe.

“Funny, I was told this was the place where terrible people could have a drink in peace,” he says to the man, who seethes at him. “I would like to have my drink in peace, if you don’t mind.”

“Get out of here,” says the man, trying to grab for his shirt. “Get your fuckin’ hellspawn ass _out of here_.”

He scoots backward, and says, as calmly as possible, pushing _magic_ and manners into his voice out of mostly instinct, “I said, _I’d like to have my drink in peace_. If you’re so good and decent as you say you are, _then walk away._ ” He lets the threat seep in there, the _or else_ hanging in the air between them, unspoken but still present. If this bastard truly wants a fight, he doesn’t see any reason why he should hold back.

The charm sinks in, and the man blinks at him, suddenly. For a moment it’s as if the world is made of glass and balanced on a pinhead—one wrong move, just one, and everything could shatter.

Then the man turns on his heel, and without a word, walks away.

Keg, who’d been about to explode out of her seat with her axe swinging, relaxes again and says, “That was pretty fucking cool.”

He takes a sip of his drink. “I didn’t know I could do that,” he confesses.

Keg stares at him. “If it didn’t work, what were you going to do?” she asks.

“Teach him some manners, perhaps,” he says, resting a hand on the sword hanging from his hip. He doesn’t know if he’ll be sleeping at all tonight—not without the weight of something by his head, under the pillow. He’s not sure quite what. Maybe a sword, in easy reach. Just in case. Just in case.

Fourth, he’s apparently a very paranoid sort of person. A terrible one, too. Maybe he’s earned the title of _hellspawn_ , somehow, beyond simply being a tiefling.

Fifth, some part of him is sure he can live with that.

(Sixth: he doesn’t fit in his own skin.)

\--

Rumors drift into his ear, of a hero of Tal’Dorei coming to Wildemount, looking for something. Adventure, perhaps.

When they come into Zadash, the first time he spies that hero, that Percival de Rolo of Whitestone, it’s from afar. De Rolo is kneeling down in front of a child, pulling a coin from behind the little girl’s ear, and something makes him stop in his tracks and stare for a moment. Something about de Rolo—

He blinks, shuts his eyes. His head is pounding, and Keg must be worried by now. He turns and walks away.

He doesn’t notice de Rolo standing up now, brushing past the crowd, trying to catch him but never quite managing. He slips out of the man’s grasp, and back into the shadows of Zadash.

\--

The second time, de Rolo tracks him down and says, “All right, fun’s over, _where is she?_ ”

He blinks. De Rolo has him pinned like a butterfly to a board, arm across his throat in a Zadash backalley. They haven’t found the Evening Nip yet, him and Keg, not in two days of searching, and he’s not sure how long this Gentleman will wait for him. How long the Mighty Nein will wait for him, either.

And de Rolo is snarling at him and his headache is growing and growing and he has to shut his eyes, it hurts to even _think_ —

“Shady Creek Run,” says de Rolo. “Where is it? I have to—I left someone _trapped_ there, when I woke up like—like this. I need to get back.”

“What exactly makes you think I know?” he asks.

De Rolo smiles. It’s the razor-thin smile of someone on the verge of snapping, but holding himself together because he’s a good person, wants to be, strives to be. It’s a strange smile to see on his face. “I think you do,” he says. “You’re Mollymauk Tealeaf?”

He looks him in the eyes, familiar and blue. _That’s not mine,_ he thinks, _this is not yours._

In a flash, he understands.

And then Percy grabs Mollymauk Tealeaf by the scruff of his well-made coat collar, slams _him_ up against the wall this time, and snarls, “What the _fuck_ did you do?!”

It’s strange, watching himself from the outside. Percy has had a very long three weeks, though, so this honestly may not even be the strangest thing that’s ever happened to him since waking up in someone else’s body in a shallow grave.

“I didn’t do anything!” says Tealeaf, grabbing at his wrist. “I should be asking you that, because the last thing I knew I had just _died_.” His voice cracks on the last word, like he’s trying to stave off a panic attack, and doesn’t that sound familiar to Percy. “And then I woke up in _your_ body, in what I’m assuming is _your_ castle. Not a fun experience, by the way. You’re a very paranoid man.”

“So you don’t know what’s going on?” Percy asks, searching Molly’s face for any signs of lying. Searching his own face, but someone else is wearing it, someone who’s just as panicked as Percy is, right now, and worse at hiding it.

“I just know I have to get to Shady Creek Run,” says Molly. “Someone very important to me is still there, under some very bad people. I need to get her back. Actually, I need to get multiple people back from them, but Yasha is—she doesn’t like chains.” His voice gets very small when he says his friend’s name, and Percy thinks, suddenly—oh, gods. They _both_ weren’t quite in their right minds, weren’t they?

“Listen,” starts Percy, just as Keg calls, “Hey, Molly, I found the— _what the fuck._ ”

“Keg!” Molly calls, waving a hand to Keg as she stares at them from the mouth of the alleyway. He _grins_ at her. “Keg, thank the gods you’re here, where are Beau and Caleb and Nott?”

“ _Who the fuck are you_ ,” says Keg, brandishing her axe.

“Keg, it’s _Molly_ ,” says Molly. “Mollymauk Tealeaf, of the Mighty Nein.”

“You’re fucking with me,” says Keg.

“He’s not,” says Percy, letting him go. Molly staggers somewhat, rubbing at his neck, but straightens up and dusts his coat off. Then he looks down at himself, then at Percy. “What?”

“Coat,” says Molly. “Trade you. This thing is itchy.”

“I’m sorry, what the hell’s going on?” says Keg. “Because as far as I know, _you’re_ Molly.” She points at Percy, horns and all. “And _you’re_ some rich guy from Tal’Dorei with a long name nobody can pronounce.”

“It’s pronounced Percival Fredrickstein Von Musel Klossowski de Rolo III,” says Percy, helpfully, and both Keg and Molly turn to stare at him. “But you can call me Percy.”

“The fuck,” says Keg, realization dawning on her face.

“It’s a long story,” says Percy.

“Yeah, well, I’d love to hear it!” says Keg, pointing her axe at Percy with a huff. Percy doesn’t feel all that threatened, she does that all the time, and sure enough she puts it down after a moment. “Apparently I’ve been traveling with someone who is _not_ who I thought he was this whole time. I really, really need that explanation now.”

“I’ll give it, but first,” says Percy, looking at Molly and pulling out the note he first woke up with, so long ago, “this is yours, I think.”

Molly takes the note from him with shaking hands, and slumps against the wall as he reads. He makes a soft, terrible noise of _yearning_ , before he seems to pull himself together. “Well,” he says, forcing a smile. “Lucky for you both, I know where the Evening Nip is. But you, de Rolo, are going to have to get us in. I look,” and he huffs out a breath, “ _respectable._ ”

Percy checks Molly over—he’s found Percy’s scruffiest boots, he’s pulled on Percy’s tackiest coat with the gold buttons and the little chain and the gold trimmings, he’s even somehow found Percy’s long-lost costume rapier, and he’s pulled Percy’s hair back into a ponytail, in an attempt to look roguishly charming.

“You look thoroughly disreputable,” Percy says, and it’s strange, seeing himself grin from the outside. “Take us there. I think it’s time we met with the Gentleman.”

**Author's Note:**

> thanks, Widomauk discord.


End file.
